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Religion & Liberty

Past Articles

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  • Preferential Option: A New Strategy for Latin America's Poor

    The stench as you stand on the edge of the city dump in Guatemala City is overpowering. Even more overwhelming is the realization that crashes into your heart and mind: 3,000 families actually live here. Children and parents fight the vultures and pigs and search through the garbage for small “treasures”–bits of nylon, scraps of plastic and discarded jewelry–to resell to open air marketeers. I’ll never erase the gut-wrenching picture from my mind.

    by Amy L. Sherman

  • The Entrepreneurial Vocation

    One may say, without fear of contradiction, that prejudice against minorities is unpopular in modern society. And with good reason: the idea that people are judged merely by the group that they happen to belong to, without any regard for their person or individual qualities, is properly odious to anyone with moral sensibilities.

    by Rev. Robert A. Sirico

  • Behind Centesimus Annus

    Editor’s Note: Rocco Buttiglione is a professor at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein and the author of many books and articles on Catholic social thought and the life and thought of Pope John Paul II. He has been a philosophical collaborator with the pope for many years.

    by Rocco Buttiglione

  • The Myth of a Value-Free Education

    Americans love myths. By “myth,” I do not mean the old-fashioned myths that my generation read in grade school. Many Americans would find reading at that fifth-grade level too difficult these days. What I mean by “myth” is what older generations used to call a fiction. One of the more influential myths presently affecting the American family is the myth of a value-free education. A value-free education is described as one in which students are supposed to be free from any coerced exposure to the values of anyone.

    by Ronald H. Nash

  • A Preferential Option for Liberty

    This special issue of Religion and Liberty offers our readers a sampling of initial reactions to the encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II which commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the inauguration of modern Catholic social teaching.

    by Rev. Robert A. Sirico

  • Profits and Morals: A Non-Catholic Assessment of Centesimus Annus

    In 1986 America’s Catholic bishops issued a controversial pastoral letter on the subject of the nation’s economy. The cartoonist S. Kelley summed it up best in The San Diego Union. In his cartoon, two bishops were lecturing from upside-down economics textbooks and a blackboard full of obvious nonsense as a parishioner prayed by a pew: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they’re talking about.”

    by Lawrence W. Reed

  • Twilight of the Idols

    False gods exert a strong appeal, but they always fail – eventually. The false gods of tribalism, nationalism and race are ancient; we’ve had them with us always, in every part of the globe. The modern mentality has generated its own gods, more deadly than the old. The most potent of these new gods are the idols of political ideology and scientistic utopianism. Minions of these gods attempt to politicize every sector of life.

    by Edmund A. Opitz

  • Liberation Cinema: A Review of Romero

    (Editor’s note: Romero will be aired as the CBS “Movie of the Week” on April 16. The following review is revised and reprinted with permission from the January 1990 issue of Reason magazine, copyright 1990 by the Reason Foundation, 2716 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 1062, Santa Monica, CA 90405.)

    by Rev. Robert A. Sirico